Gregorian calendar - history and current state. How does the Gregorian calendar differ from the Julian calendar?

Different ways of calculating the calendar. A new style of time calculation was introduced by the Council of People's Commissars - the government of Soviet Russia January 24, 1918 “Decree on the introduction of the Western European calendar in the Russian Republic”.

The decree was intended to promote “the establishment in Russia of the same time reckoning with almost all cultural peoples”. Indeed, since 1582, when throughout Europe the Julian calendar, in accordance with the recommendations of astronomers, was replaced by the Gregorian, the Russian calendar turned out to differ from the calendars of civilized states by 13 days.

The fact is that the new European calendar was born through the efforts of the Pope, but the Russian Orthodox clergy had no authority or decree from the Catholic Pope, and they rejected the innovation. So they lived for more than 300 years: in Europe it’s New Year, in Russia it’s still December 19th.

The decree of the Council of People's Commissars (an abbreviation of the Council of People's Commissars) dated January 24, 1918, ordered February 1, 1918 to be considered February 14th (in parentheses, we note that according to many years of observations, the Russian Orthodox calendar, that is, the “Old Style,” is more consistent with the climate of the European part of the Russian Federation For example, on March 1, when according to the old style it is still deep February, there is no smell of spring, and relative warming begins in mid-March or its first days according to the old style).

Not everyone liked the new style

However, not only Russia resisted the establishment of the Catholic count of days; in Greece, the “New Style” was legalized in 1924, Turkey - 1926, Egypt - 1928. At the same time, it is not heard that the Greeks or Egyptians celebrated, as in Russia, two holidays: New Year and Old New Year, that is, New Year according to the old style.

It is interesting that the introduction of the Gregorian calendar was accepted without enthusiasm in those European countries where Protestantism was the leading religion. So in England they switched to a new account of time only in 1752, in Sweden - a year later, in 1753.

Julian calendar

It was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Started on January 1st. The year had 365 days. A year number divisible by 4 was considered a leap year. One day was added to it - February 29. The difference between the calendar of Julius Caesar and the calendar of Pope Gregory is that the first has a leap year every fourth year without exception, while the second has leap years only those years that are divisible by four, but not divisible by a hundred. As a result, the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is gradually increasing and, for example, in 2101, Orthodox Christmas will be celebrated not on January 7, but on January 8.

The Roman calendar was one of the least accurate. At first, it generally had 304 days and included only 10 months, starting from the first month of spring (Martius) and ending with the onset of winter (December - the “tenth” month); In winter there was simply no keeping track of time. King Numa Pompilius is credited with introducing two winter months (Januarius and Februarius). The additional month - Mercedonius - was inserted by the pontiffs at their own discretion, quite arbitrarily and in accordance with various momentary interests. In 46 BC. e. Julius Caesar carried out a calendar reform based on the developments of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, taking the Egyptian solar calendar as a basis.

In order to correct the accumulated errors, he, by his power as the great pontiff, inserted in the transitional year, in addition to Mercedonius, two additional months between November and December; and from January 1, 45, a Julian year of 365 days was established, with leap years every 4 years. In this case, an extra day was inserted between February 23 and 24, as before Mercedonia; and since, according to the Roman calculation system, the day of February 24 was called “the sixth (sextus) from the Kalends of March,” then the intercalary day was called “twice the sixth (bis sextus) from the Kalends of March” and the year, accordingly, annus bissextus - hence, through the Greek language, our word "leap year". At the same time, the month of Quintilius was renamed in honor of Caesar (to Julius).

In the 4th-6th centuries, in most Christian countries, unified Easter tables were established, based on the Julian calendar; Thus, the Julian calendar spread to the entire Christian world. In these tables, March 21 was taken as the day of the vernal equinox.

However, as the error accumulated (1 day in 128 years), the discrepancy between the astronomical vernal equinox and the calendar one became increasingly obvious, and many in Catholic Europe believed that it could no longer be ignored. This was noted by the 13th-century Castilian king Alfonso X the Wise; in the next century, the Byzantine scientist Nikephoros Gregoras even proposed a calendar reform. In reality, such a reform was carried out by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, based on the project of the mathematician and physician Luigi Lilio. in 1582: the next day after October 4th came October 15th. Secondly, a new, more precise rule about leap years began to apply.

Julian calendar was developed by a group of Alexandrian astronomers led by Sosigenes and introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. uh..

The Julian calendar was based on the chronology culture of Ancient Egypt. In Ancient Rus', the calendar was known as the “Peacemaking Circle”, “Church Circle” and “Great Indiction”.

The year according to the Julian calendar begins on January 1, since it was on this day from 153 BC. e. the newly elected consuls took office. In the Julian calendar, a normal year consists of 365 days and is divided into 12 months. Once every 4 years, a leap year is declared, to which one day is added - February 29 (previously, a similar system was adopted in the zodiac calendar according to Dionysius). Thus, the Julian year has an average length of 365.25 days, which differs by 11 minutes from the tropical year.

The Julian calendar is usually called the old style.

The calendar was based on static monthly holidays. The first holiday with which the month began was the Kalends. The next holiday, falling on the 7th (in March, May, July and October) and on the 5th of other months, was Nones. The third holiday, falling on the 15th (in March, May, July and October) and the 13th of other months, was the Ides.

Replacement by the Gregorian calendar

In Catholic countries, the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582 by decree of Pope Gregory XIII: the next day after October 4 was October 15. Protestant countries abandoned the Julian calendar gradually, throughout the 17th-18th centuries (the last were Great Britain from 1752 and Sweden). In Russia, the Gregorian calendar has been used since 1918 (it is usually called the new style), in Orthodox Greece - since 1923.

In the Julian calendar, a year was a leap year if it ended in 00.325 AD. The Council of Nicaea established this calendar for all Christian countries. 325 g day of the vernal equinox.

Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII on October 4, 1582 to replace the old Julian calendar: the next day after Thursday, October 4, became Friday, October 15 (there are no days from October 5 to October 14, 1582 in the Gregorian calendar).

In the Gregorian calendar, the length of the tropical year is taken to be 365.2425 days. The duration of a non-leap year is 365 days, a leap year is 366.

Story

The reason for the adoption of the new calendar was the shift in the day of the vernal equinox, by which the date of Easter was determined. Before Gregory XIII, Popes Paul III and Pius IV tried to implement the project, but they did not achieve success. The preparation of the reform, at the direction of Gregory XIII, was carried out by astronomers Christopher Clavius ​​and Luigi Lilio (aka Aloysius Lilius). The results of their work were recorded in a papal bull, named after the first line of the Latin. Inter gravissimas (“Among the most important”).

Firstly, the new calendar immediately at the time of adoption shifted the current date by 10 days due to accumulated errors.

Secondly, a new, more precise rule about leap years began to apply.

A year is a leap year, that is, it contains 366 days if:

Its number is divisible by 4 and not divisible by 100 or

His number is divisible by 400.

Thus, over time, the Julian and Gregorian calendars diverge more and more: by 1 day per century, if the number of the previous century is not divisible by 4. The Gregorian calendar reflects the true state of affairs much more accurately than the Julian. It gives a much better approximation of the tropical year.

In 1583, Gregory XIII sent an embassy to Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople with a proposal to switch to a new calendar. At the end of 1583, at a council in Constantinople, the proposal was rejected as not complying with the canonical rules for celebrating Easter.

In Russia, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1918 by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars, according to which in 1918 January 31 was followed by February 14.

Since 1923, most local Orthodox churches, with the exception of the Russian, Jerusalem, Georgian, Serbian and Athos, have adopted the New Julian calendar, similar to the Gregorian, which coincides with it until the year 2800. It was also formally introduced by Patriarch Tikhon for use in the Russian Orthodox Church on October 15, 1923. However, this innovation, although it was accepted by almost all Moscow parishes, generally caused disagreement in the Church, so already on November 8, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon ordered “the universal and mandatory introduction of the new style into church use to be temporarily postponed.” Thus, the new style was in effect in the Russian Orthodox Church for only 24 days.

In 1948, at the Moscow Conference of Orthodox Churches, it was decided that Easter, as well as all movable holidays, should be calculated according to the Alexandrian Paschal (Julian calendar), and non-movable ones according to the calendar according to which the Local Church lives. The Finnish Orthodox Church celebrates Easter according to the Gregorian calendar.

On the threshold new years When one year follows another, we don’t even think about what style we live by. Surely many of us remember from history lessons that once there was a different calendar, later people switched to a new one and began to live according to a new one style.

Let's talk about how these two calendars differ: Julian and Gregorian .

The history of the creation of the Julian and Gregorian calendars

To make time calculations, people came up with a chronology system, which was based on the periodicity of the movements of celestial bodies, and this is how the calendar.

Word "calendar" comes from the Latin word calendarium, which means "debt book". This is due to the fact that debtors paid their debt on the day Kalends, the first days of each month were called, they coincided with new moon.

Yes, y ancient romans every month had 30 days, or rather, 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes. At first this calendar contained ten months, hence, by the way, the name of our last month of the year - December(from Latin decem– tenth). All months were named after Roman gods.

But, starting from the 3rd century BC, a different calendar was used in the ancient world, based on a four-year lunisolar cycle, it gave an error in the solar year of one day. Used in Egypt solar calendar, compiled on the basis of observations of the Sun and Sirius. The year according to it was three hundred sixty-five days. It consisted of twelve months of thirty days every.

It was this calendar that became the basis Julian calendar. It is named after the emperor Guy Julius Caesar and was introduced into 45 BC. The beginning of the year according to this calendar began 1st of January.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC)

Lasted Julian calendar more than sixteen centuries, until 1582 G. Pope Gregory XIII did not propose a new chronology system. The reason for the adoption of the new calendar was the gradual shift in relation to the Julian calendar of the day of the vernal equinox, by which the date of Easter was determined, as well as the discrepancy between the Easter full moons and the astronomical ones. The head of the Catholic Church believed that it was necessary to determine the exact calculation of the celebration of Easter so that it would fall on a Sunday, and also return the vernal equinox to the date of March 21.

Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585)

However, most European countries followed the call of Pope Gregory XIII and switched to a new style chronology.

The transition to the Gregorian calendar entailed the following changes :

1. to correct accumulated errors, the new calendar immediately shifted the current date by 10 days at the time of adoption;

2. a new, more precise rule about leap years came into force - a leap year, that is, contains 366 days, if:

The year number is a multiple of 400 (1600, 2000, 2400);

The year number is a multiple of 4 and not a multiple of 100 (... 1892, 1896, 1904, 1908...);

3. The rules for calculating Christian (namely Catholic) Easter have changed.

The difference between the dates of the Julian and Gregorian calendars increases by three days every 400 years.

History of chronology in Russia

In Rus', before Epiphany, the new year began in March, but since the 10th century, the New Year began to be celebrated in September, according to the Byzantine church calendar. However, people, accustomed to the centuries-old tradition, continued to celebrate the New Year with the awakening of nature - in the spring. While the king Ivan III V 1492 year did not issue a decree stating that the New Year was officially postponed to beginning of autumn. But this did not help, and the Russian people celebrated two new years: in spring and autumn.

Tsar Peter the First, striving for everything European, December 19, 1699 year issued a decree that the Russian people, together with Europeans, celebrate the New Year 1st of January.

February 14, 1918, after the coup, all of Russia switched to a new style, now the secular state began to live according to Gregorian calendar. Later, in 1923 year, the new authorities tried to transfer the church to a new calendar, however To His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon managed to preserve traditions.

Today Julian and Gregorian calendars continue to exist together. Julian calendar enjoy Georgian, Jerusalem, Serbian and Russian churches, whereas Catholics and Protestants are guided by Gregorian.

In Europe, starting in 1582, the reformed (Gregorian) calendar gradually spread. The Gregorian calendar provides a much more accurate approximation of the tropical year. The Gregorian calendar was first introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in Catholic countries on October 4, 1582, replacing the previous one: the next day after Thursday, October 4, became Friday, October 15.
The Gregorian calendar (“new style”) is a time calculation system based on the cyclic revolution of the Earth around the Sun. The length of the year is taken to be 365.2425 days. The Gregorian calendar contains 97 by 400 years.

Difference between Julian and Gregorian calendars

At the time of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the difference between it and the Julian calendar was 10 days. However, this difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars gradually increases over time due to differences in the rules for determining leap years. Therefore, when determining which date of the “new calendar” a particular date of the “old calendar” falls on, it is necessary to take into account the century in which the event took place. For example, if in the 14th century this difference was 8 days, then in the 20th century it was already 13 days.

This follows the distribution of leap years:

• a year whose number is a multiple of 400 is a leap year;
• other years, the number of which is a multiple of 100, are non-leap years;
• other years, the number of which is a multiple of 4, are leap years.

Thus, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years. Also, 2100 will not be a leap year. An error of one day compared to the year of the equinoxes in the Gregorian calendar will accumulate in approximately 10 thousand years (in the Julian calendar - approximately in 128 years).

Time of approval of the Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, adopted in most countries of the world, was not put into use immediately:
1582 - Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, France, Lorraine, Holland, Luxembourg;
1583 - Austria (part), Bavaria, Tyrol.
1584 - Austria (part), Switzerland, Silesia, Westphalia.
1587 - Hungary.
1610 - Prussia.
1700 - Protestant German states, Denmark.
1752 - Great Britain.
1753 - Sweden, Finland.
1873 - Japan.
1911 - China.
1916 - Bulgaria.
1918 - Soviet Russia.
1919 - Serbia, Rumania.
1927 - Türkiye.
1928 - Egypt.
1929 - Greece.

Gregorian calendar in Russia

As you know, until February 1918, Russia, like most Orthodox countries, lived according to the Julian calendar. The “new style” of chronology appeared in Russia in January 1918, when the Council of People's Commissars replaced the traditional Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar. As stated in the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars, this decision was made “in order to establish in Russia the same calculation of time with almost all cultural peoples.” In accordance with the decree, the dates of all obligations were considered to have occurred 13 days later. Until July 1, 1918, a kind of transition period was established when it was allowed to use the old style calendar. But at the same time, the document clearly established the order of writing old and new dates: it was necessary to write “after the date of each day according to the new calendar, in brackets the number according to the calendar that was still in force.”

Events and documents are dated with a double date in cases where it is necessary to indicate the old and new styles. For example, for anniversaries, main events in all works of a biographical nature and dates of events and documents on the history of international relations associated with countries where the Gregorian calendar was introduced earlier than in Russia.

New style date (Gregorian calendar)

As in other Christian countries, from the end of the 10th century in Rus', the Julian calendar was used, based on observations of the visible movement of the Sun across the sky. It was introduced in Ancient Rome by Gaius Julius Caesar in 46 BC. e.

The calendar was developed by the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes based on the calendar of Ancient Egypt. When Rus' adopted Christianity in the 10th century, the Julian calendar came with it. However, the average length of a year in the Julian calendar is 365 days and 6 hours (that is, there are 365 days in a year, with an additional day added every fourth year). While the duration of the astronomical solar year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. That is, the Julian year was 11 minutes 14 seconds longer than the astronomical year and, therefore, lagged behind the real change of years.

By 1582, the difference between the Julian calendar and the real change of years was already 10 days.

This led to a reform of the calendar, which was carried out in 1582 by a special commission created by Pope Gregory XIII. The difference was eliminated when, after October 4, 1582, it was ordered to count not October 5, but immediately October 15. After the name of the pope, the new, reformed calendar began to be called the Gregorian calendar.

In this calendar, unlike the Julian calendar, the final year of the century, if it is not divisible by 400, is not a leap year. Thus, the Gregorian calendar has 3 fewer leap years in each four-hundredth anniversary than the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar retained the names of the months of the Julian calendar, the additional day in the leap year is February 29, and the beginning of the year is January 1.

The transition of countries around the world to the Gregorian calendar was long. First, the reform took place in Catholic countries (Spain, Italian states, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a little later in France, etc.), then in Protestant countries (in Prussia in 1610, in all German states by 1700, in Denmark in 1700, in Great Britain in 1752, in Sweden in 1753). And only in the 19th-20th centuries the Gregorian calendar was adopted in some Asian (in Japan in 1873, China in 1911, Turkey in 1925) and Orthodox (in Bulgaria in 1916, in Serbia in 1919, in Greece in 1924 year) states.

In the RSFSR, the transition to the Gregorian calendar was carried out according to the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR “On the introduction of the Western European calendar in the Russian Republic” dated February 6, 1918 (January 26, old style).

The calendar problem in Russia has been discussed several times. In 1899, a Commission on the issue of calendar reform in Russia worked under the Astronomical Society, which included Dmitry Mendeleev and historian Vasily Bolotov. The commission proposed modernizing the Julian calendar.

“Taking into account: 1) that in 1830 the petition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences for the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in Russia was rejected by Emperor Nicholas I and 2) that the Orthodox states and the entire Orthodox population of the East and West rejected the attempts of representatives of Catholicism to introduce the Gregorian calendar in Russia, the Commission unanimously decided to reject all proposals for the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in Russia and, without being embarrassed by the choice of reform, to settle on one that would combine the idea of ​​​​truth and possible accuracy, both scientific and historical, in relation to Christian chronology in Russia,” reads Resolution of the Commission on the reform of the calendar in Russia from 1900.

Such a long use of the Julian calendar in Russia was due to the position of the Orthodox Church, which had a negative attitude towards the Gregorian calendar.

After the church was separated from the state in the RSFSR, linking the civil calendar to the church calendar lost its relevance.

The difference in calendars created inconvenience in relations with Europe, which was the reason for the adoption of the decree “in order to establish in Russia the same calculation of time with almost all cultural nations.”

The question of reform was raised in the fall of 1917. One of the projects under consideration proposed a gradual transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, dropping a day each year. But, since the difference between the calendars by that time was 13 days, the transition would take 13 years. Therefore, Lenin supported the option of an immediate transition to a new style. The church refused to switch to the new style.

“The first day after January 31 of this year should be considered not February 1, but February 14, the second day should be considered the 15th, etc.,” read the first paragraph of the decree. The remaining points indicated how new deadlines for fulfilling any obligations should be calculated and on what dates citizens would be able to receive their salaries.

The change of dates has created confusion with the celebration of Christmas. Before the transition to the Gregorian calendar in Russia, Christmas was celebrated on December 25, but now it has moved to January 7. As a result of these changes, in 1918 there was no Christmas at all in Russia. The last Christmas was celebrated in 1917, which fell on December 25th. And the next time the Orthodox holiday was celebrated on January 7, 1919.